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I'm writing a book about the different stories from religions that existed in my country some centuries ago.
In order to learn more about them, I had to acquire over 20 books. Each of those has stories from different parts of my country, and from different time periods (since some of them changed over time), all of which are part of multiple religions that exist (with changes), and that used to exist.
Some of those books are "generic", like folklore dictionaries, but some are books that tell one specific story, and that's where my concern starts. My wish is to make a single book, which would be a "compilation" of all of those stories, just so people wouldn't need to do like me, and acquire over 20 books in order to learn about those stories.
However, since some of those books only tell a single story, there are two different problems that arise:
1 - If my book includes that story, it would hurt the revenue of that book's writer, since the book would have nothing else to offer. How can I "fix" that?
2 - Which would be the legal implications of including such kind of story, considering that it is a religious story, if I can only find that story in one single book from one single author?
It's important to note that some of those books credit the story inside it to another person (other than the author) that has been dead for over a century.
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It depends on if your plan is to do a reprint of the originals under one cover, or if your plan is to retell the stories in your own words.
If it's a reprint, you'll need to either enter into a contract with the rights' holder (usually the original author or the original publisher) or establish that the work is no longer under copyright protection in your country (generally if the writer has been dead for over 70 years, in the United States) for each individual work. If you are going through a traditional publisher they may be able to do this for you, but you'll need to let them know up front that rights have not been secured (which may scare them off).
If you are doing retelling AND the story itself is originally from the folk tradition OR from an older story that is out of copyright, then make sure your version isn't too close a match to anyone else's, and list your sources in a bibliography. If at all possible, you'll want to base your versions on more than one source in this case.
I don't see either of these paths as unethical, or harmful to other writers. In the one case (reprints), you will be getting permissions first, and likely making payments or assigning a percentage of the royalties to the original author. In the other (retelling) you would be working from stories that already belong to everyone.
The only real questionable area would be if you wanted to do a new retelling of someone's original story that is still under copyright. I'm not sure what the legalities of that are, but I would imagine they are similar to if you were doing a reprint. I wouldn't personally do it unless I got written permissions first.
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